Musicians are the ultimate consumers. They spend a lot of money on their style and substance, and are generally easy to get recurring revenues from, if you can push the right buttons.
(Disclaimer: worked in the MI business for decades. It always fills me with a sense of wonder, the things people will buy to make themselves sound different from others while also conforming to industry expectations...)
Because that link may not work forever - although I suspect it will be there for a while - the summary is: two Telecaster guitars painted to look like copies of the Teles Jimmy Page played in Led Zeppelin. Signed by Jimmy Page. £44,999.
I'd love to know what the shop markup is on those, or if they're on sale-or-return.
Synthesizers have a similar scene. An official Keith Emerson Moog Modular Replica reissue a few years ago was being sold for >$100k. (Note to those under 40: Keith Emerson was a famous/notorious rock keyboardist in the 1970s.)
Musical Instrument markup is still pretty astonishing outside the 'cocktail set' shenanigans, especially if your eyes have been bleeding from the situation in the tech scene.
It doesn't have to be a 'classic' synthesiser to command extraordinary markup/profit.
There is a reason why the current synthesiser market is vibrant and active and virulent - and nobody is playing well with each other, there are more competing platforms to do the same thing than many other spaces.
That reason is, you can spend $100 on a BOM-per-product, and sell it for 5 figures, year after year. That $3000 synth workstation, at scale, can add up to a lot of real, good old fashioned atom-based commercialisation.
> I'd love to know what the shop markup is on those, or if they're on sale-or-return.
I'd say they were pretty expensive to produce:
> And these 2 pieces were masterfully built by Paul Waller at the Fender Custom Shop under the discerning eye of Page. They are exact re-creations of his beloved guitars!
Bloody hell. I have a Nile Rodgers Custom Strat that Paul Waller was involved in but certainly didn't make himself. And less than a tenth of the price of these two. Is there really a significant difference in provenance between a Custom Shop guitar and a Master Built?
There is a distinction in the market between professionals and hobbyists, but then most of the MI market is borne on the fact that there are about 2 - 10 million new musician students coming into the scene every year - a portion will become hobbyists, and a very, very small percentage will become 'professionals', by many variant degrees of definition of the word professional - i.e. gets paid, has money to spend on music stuff.
Musicians can be pro or hobbyist, doesn't matter to the instrument maker unless its important the end user feels special. Thus, the higher prices for 'special' instruments.
Music, though, doesn't need to be high quality in order to be experienced. Even low quality instruments can sound amazing in the hands of a musician - hobbyist or otherwise.
A lot of professional musicians aren’t paid much, so it’s not really surprising that hobbyists (who can work at all ranges of pay) sometimes have better gear.
My brother teaches guitar and he frequently sees people who’ve just started playing show up for lessons with ludicrously expensive instruments. And hey, if they enjoy it, more power to them.
(Disclaimer: worked in the MI business for decades. It always fills me with a sense of wonder, the things people will buy to make themselves sound different from others while also conforming to industry expectations...)